Seams

Quarters (Full Time Hobby)

18/20

You’re unlikely to hear a bolder, more confident start to an album of electronic music this year than the juddering, opening drums ‘n’ chords of ClapOne, the track that launches Seams’ debut album Quarters. Complete with cascading synths, and a jagged, raw, percussive heartbeat, the track sets the tone for a muscular but delicate set of electronica and techno. Like early Gold Panda productions, Quarters is dripping in energy and passion. Echoing some of Panda’s timpani-flavoured chiming production, in places the album offers just a hint of the trance aesthetics that acts such as Nathan Fake have made their own. Elsewhere, it’s the squelching, jittery but melodic punch of Moderat that is a more suitable reference. But it’s undoubtedly in this rarefied category of elite producers that Seams deserved to be placed, chiefly because he’s succeeded at that most tricky of tasks: translating the adrenaline, ecstasy and abandonment of the dancefloor into a studio recording, without compromising for a second on subtlety or sophistication. And when, as on the pensive Hurry Guests, the drama dial gets cranked to eleven, it’s difficult to think of a producer with more compelling credentials for brooding, ballsy
electronic music than Seams.

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Words: Adam Corner